State SAT scores up one point

EDITOR'S NOTE: The statewide breakdown of SAT scores by local school system will not be available from the state for several weeks. All local school systems should have individual SAT averages today.

ATLANTA -- The good news -- that Georgia results on the Scholastic Assessment Test college-entrance exam improved slightly -- was tempered by the fact that scores fell for black students and that the state moved one step closer to the basement nationally.

1999 Georgia SAT scores

Georgia high school students boostedtheir average SAT scores by just one point this year.

Verbal Math Total Change

Highest possible score8008001,600

National5055111,016(-1)

Georgia487482969(+1)

Male490499989*N.C.

Female484469953(+1)

American Indian460453913(-30)

Asian4835421,025(+11)

Black427414841(-6)

Mexican-American470466936(-3)

White5125071,019(+1)

*N.C.: no change

Source: The College Board

The combined mean math and verbal SAT score for the 49,357 students who took the test was 969 out of a possible 1,600, up one point from 1998, according to test results released Tuesday.

Nationally, the mean score dropped one point to 1,016.

Georgia has gained 21 points during the past six years, one of the fastest improvement rates in the country.

However, with big gains by Washington, D.C., Georgia fell from 49th to 50th in national rankings, ahead only of longtime doormat South Carolina.

And the state Board of Education's goal of reaching a 1,000 mean score by 2001 has all but disappeared.

''We either don't make that goal or we gain 30-odd points in the next two years,'' said state School Superintendent Linda Schrenko.

While adding that she was glad the board set such high goals, she told reporters Tuesday, ''I hope we have a miracle next year.''

Gov. Roy Barnes, who is chairing a school improvement task force, said the state's ranking ''is not something we should be proud of.''

''This report shows that we still have a lot of work to do here in Georgia,'' he said. ''You cannot ignore the SAT. It is the most publicly recognized and most often quoted indicator of a school system's performance.''

Boys continue to do much better on the SAT than girls, particularly in math. Nationally, the mean score was 1,040 for boys and 997 for girls. The math mean score for boys was 531; it was 495 for girls.

In Georgia, the mean boys score was 989. For girls, it was 953. The math score was 30 points higher for Georgia boys than girls.

Bob Schaeffer, director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, argued that the SAT is biased and the heavy emphasis placed on the results ''will illegally cheat thousands of young women out of college admissions and scholarships they have earned by superior classroom performance.''

Schaeffer said this is the third consecutive year the SAT ''gender gap'' has widened.

''Despite their much lower SAT scores, young women earn higher grades than their male counterparts in both college and high school,'' he said. ''First-year college grades are all that the SAT supposedly predicts. The inaccuracy of this claim means that schools which rely on SAT scores to determine admissions or scholarship aid are illegally denying females equal educational opportunities.''

Also troubling for Georgia was a six-point drop in the mean score for black students who took the test. That follows big improvements last year.

''Our African-American students lost ground, which we don't like to see. We will be looking at what caused the dip,'' Schrenko said.

State officials continue to argue that too many students who are ill-prepared or won't graduate from college are taking the test, skewing the results.

The College Board, which administers the SAT, discourages state-by-state comparisons because states that have a higher proportion of students taking the test tend to yield lower scores.

About 63 percent of high school graduates took the SAT in Georgia, which is one of about two-dozen states in which half or more of the students take the test each year.

By comparison, Alabama has much higher SAT scores, but only 9 percent of the graduates -- those near the top with lots of college options -- take the exam.

In Alabama, more students take the ACT, the other major college-entrance exam.

Still, Alabama's average score on the ACT was higher than Georgia's this year. About 16 percent of Georgia graduates take the ACT. The state's average score ranked it 45th nationally this year.

State officials have tried to help the situation in recent years by paying the fees of 10th graders who want to take the PSAT, a preliminary exam.

Still, Schrenko told reporters that only 35 percent of the Georgia students who took the test this year completed the full college-preparatory curriculum, compared with just over half nationally.

''Just taking the test without taking the courses is not very productive,'' she said.

The superintendent speculated that Georgia's HOPE scholarship program, with its promise of a tuition-free college education, may be enticing students to take the SAT.

She said 80 percent of Georgians don't graduate from college, and the state and local systems need to do a better job of communicating to students that they don't have to take the SAT or attend a university to succeed. Instead, they could be learning trades or attending technical schools.

''We need to be counseling kids that it's OK to be a plumber,'' she said.

But Schrenko added that the state can't keep kids from taking the SAT.

''As long as you have freedom of choice, you aren't going to be able to stop parents and kids from getting up and taking the test on Saturday morning,'' she said.